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Commentary

Google To Shutter Average Position Metric

Google will retire the average position reporting metrics used in Google Ads this September.

"If you currently
use average position, we recommend that you start using these new metrics when measuring and optimizing for prominence," wrote Pallavi Naresh, product manager at Google Ads, in a post.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to marketers. Preparing for the shift, Google in November 2018 introduced four new metrics analyzing ad positions on a search results query page.

The new metrics "Impression (Absolute Top) %," and "Impression (Top) %" describe the percentage of a marketer's ads that appear at the top of the page and the very top of the page,
respectively.

These new metrics provide a clear view of the prominence of the ad on the page compared with the average position metric, per Google.

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It’s suggested that
advertisers use these metrics as a target to set bids when wanting to increase the percentage of ads that either show at the top or absolute top of the search results page.

Google also
introduced a click-share metric for search campaigns earlier in February.
Click share represents the estimated share of all achievable clicks an ad receives. Previously it was only available for Shopping campaigns.

The metric is intended to show the effectiveness of
ads and how users engage with them versus the competition.